Archive for the ‘Career’ Category

On April the 29th, I attended a presentation at Pixar by two leading HR recruiters in the industry who specified the do’s and don’ts of the application process. The presentation was highly informative and answered many burning questions that any applicants might have for companies looking to hire. I took notes on what the recruiters said they were looking for, and would like to share them with other Cogswell students.

Resumes
• Include all of work experience with dates, keep updated. Don’t worry so much about formatting.
• Put work experience before schooling.
• Make contact info easy to find.
• List software skills. (Maya, Zbrush, etc) Make sure of proficiency. Some people put level of experience next to the software.
• Clubs, interests, awards are good to list.
• Font doesn’t matter, readability does.
• Prior work experience that isn’t industry experience is acceptable.
• References aren’t necessary, they come later in the hiring process.
• If you took time off to travel, include in resume.
• High school details don’t really matter.
• Objectives, if included, should be focused. It’s ok not to have it.
• Personal logos don’t matter so much.
• If you have experience/education in one thing but really have interest in another, present that.
Cover Letter
• In production, the cover letter is everything. It’s all recruiters have to know your personality.
• Summarize who you are, what you do, and why you want to do the job. Don’t go on about your life story, but clearly explain why you would be the best candidate.
• It is very good to have a cover letter, and you should always have one available. Sometimes, hiring managers do skip reading the cover letter and go straight to the resume.
• Don’t be a fanboy.
• Don’t be arrogant. The cover letter is about your story and you—tell it like one.
• Humility and being humble will take you far.
Demo Reels
• Should be around 2 minutes. Quality is better than quantity. Most recent work in the front if possible, things that you’re really proud of.
• Do call-outs in your demo reel, clarifying what you did if you’re presenting group work. Be honest about what you’ve done, specify your job.
• Sound isn’t necessary, unless it’s lip-syncing.
• ONLY include best stuff. Don’t put in filler material.
• If submitting on a website, having demo reels separated into different subjects/different areas might be good.
• They can see all the positions you’ve applied to. Don’t go applying for every job available at the studio. Be certain about what you want.
• It’s ok if the demo reel is super short, only include best work.
• Social media can influence a decision.
Interview
• Be well-presented. Dress well, care about hygiene and personal appearance.
• Come prepared. Make sure links, material is all set and ready to go.
• Do research on the company. Know about the films and their work.
• Come early, rather than late.
• Show interest, speak about what you’re applying for. Know about your position.
• Ask genuine questions, ones you can’t find on the website.
• Be humble!!
• Make eye contact with everyone.
• Write a thank-you email to the recruiters. It’s okay to follow up.
• Check-in emails are good. If you got really close in the interview process, every 3-6 months you can stay in contact with recruiters.

The Academy-award nominated, BAFTA award winning, and French academy award (Cesar) winning filmmaker and director Sylvain Chomet (director of ‘The Illusionist’ and ‘The Triplets of Belleville’) has just directed a brand new animated music video for “Carmen“, a song off of Rwandan-Belgian rapper Stromae’s album ‘Racine Carrée’.

The video is very clearly done in Chomet’s style, a look achieved by scanning pencil drawings into the computer and then coloring them. With minimal cleanup if any, and watercolor style backgrounds, this creates a more raw look that is both appealing and refreshing to see. The song is loosely based on the 1800′s opera of the same name, and features an animated Stromae struggle with his addiction to Twitter. What begins as a small habit soon turns into a massive weight on his shoulders, an obsession that sinks its claws into every facet of his life, from friendship to love.

The video was released Tuesday, March 31st on Buzzfeed, and has gotten over 5 million views on Buzzfeed and 2 million views on Youtube. It was produced at Th1ng, Chomet was not only the director but served as lead animator as well alongside Neil Boyle. Background layout was done by Marcin Lichowski, while Kirk Hendry served as lead compositor and lighting designer for the short.

Fans of Chomet’s style might also want to check out his Simpson’s Couch gag, which can be viewed on Th1ngs channel on Vimeo.

Source: cartoonbrew.com

Industry veteran Will Finn (animator, voice actor, character designer, storyboard artist and director) with nearly 40 years of experience has offered his thoughts and advice to anyone who’s dream it is to work in animation. In his blog post, “Why You Shouldn’t Want A Job In Animation”, Finn spoke about and explained the difference between a ‘job’ and a ‘career’ in animation:

“To me a job is something you depend on from an employer. It’s theirs to give and theirs to take away… A career is something I have to be responsible for based on my reputation, my ability, and my preferences. I don’t expect much beyond what I invoiced for last week, and I keep tabs on whatever’s coming up—staying in touch with long-term contacts and making new ones almost constantly. I try to keep at least one ‘Plan B’ in mind at all times. And that’s fine. A career is like a life: mine to tend, mine to succeed or fail at, mine to take credit and blame for, mine to earn. I would not have it any other way.”

In the post, Finn also speaks about what it was like starting his career at Walt Disney Animation studios. Following his childhood dream only to have that dream ripped apart after “barely nine months” on the job”, while working on ‘The Fox and the Hound”, getting into behind the scenes politics, his run in’s with the higher ups, and producing work that was “substandard even for a newbie”.

This was his first crash and burn with Disney, Finn would later come back to Disney to supervise the characters of Cogsworth in ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and Iago in ‘Aladdin’, he also worked for Warner Bros., Dreamworks, the Don Bluth Studio, Reel FX, IMAGI, Renegade Animation, and others.

In his third leg at Disney in 1999, Finn would come to realize that his original childhood dream of working at Disney until retirement was clouded by the innocent lens of youth.

“Senior Disney artists who I remember envying on that day in 1979 when I got let go were being given their 20th and 25th anniversary pins alongside pink slips terminating their employment. Some of them had never worked outside the studio and the transition must have been difficult. But at that point I knew while I still admired their talent and artistry, I had stopped envying the idea of a long tenure at a single studio long ago. In 2004, I was on the pavement again, looking for work.”

I went to my first Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) this year, thanks to Cogswell’s ASB. From March 4th-6th, I was on a mission to do as much networking and have as many portfolio reviews as possible. However, there was no way I could be prepared for the level of insanity that this conference offered. I’ve been to animation conferences and other game events before, but this conference was the Godzilla of the gamer spirit. Imagine mega-nerds gathering from every different corner of the world and combining forces for a non-stop celebration of the video game industry —that would be close to capturing the essence of GDC.

When arriving on Wednesday, my first objective was to hit the Career Center. This area houses quite a few game company booths who have job opportunities. Fortunately, a few companies were interested in my portfolio, and I was able to get portfolio reviews with Gree and Glu Mobile. The High Five Casino games representative wasn’t able to do portfolio reviews, but she invited me to come back to speak to their art director.

Afterward the Career Center, I hit the main expo floor with some friends. Some of the biggest companies were there—Microsoft, Xbox, Steam, Windows, Google, and Unity to name a few. Many of them were showing off the newest tech that would be coming out in the next year or so. One display had a man hooked into a virtual reality setup in which he was physically running, turning, and shooting his gun. There were plenty of mo-cap setups as well, where one man was jumping around and playing basketball, with a monitor displaying a 3D character replicating his exact movements. I was particularly excited about a booth from TalentScotland—multiple game companies based in Scotland were being represented and actively looking for overseas workers. Working in Scotland has been an interest of mine, so I was pretty excited to find this booth.

After the conference hall shut down for the day, the real fun began. Companies rented out full bars and clubs just for GDC attendees. On Wednesday, I went to the Polycount Mixer and then to the Epic Games after-party. The events are intended for networking as well as having fun, and I made more contacts there. I also met an awesome group of people from the East coast and another from Denmark and Spain.

One thing I discovered at GDC was how big the gaming industry was in Norway. There was a whole section dedicated to Norwegian indie game developers, and apparently investors throw hundreds of thousands of dollars to those who are willing to make games. In that moment, I considered the possibility of moving to Norway to work as a 2D artist. Then I remembered I was a California girl and would likely freeze to death in Norway!

I was able to get some very beneficial contacts from GDC, one being with the Director of Engineering from Gree Mobile, based in San Francisco. I will be visiting the studio next week and having dinner with some of their employees, which is a fantastic opportunity. I wouldn’t have had the chance to talk directly to artists in the game industry had it not been for GDC. I would absolutely recommend the conference to anyone who’s looking to get into games. Besides being exposed to some of the best work out there, you are immersed in what the game industry truly feels like. I’m excited at the chance to have some of these people as future coworkers—the workweek would certainly not be a boring one.

There were dogs everywhere. Perhaps that shouldn’t have been a surprise to me after seeing the huge dog logo on the massive building, but it still caught me off guard in a pleasant way. Zynga also gave off this sense of happiness—just walking in, I could tell that the people employed by Zynga were pretty content with their environment. For those of you who don’t know, Zynga happens to be one of the largest and best-known mobile and social gaming companies in the bay area– you’ve probably also seen a few games of theirs on Facebook.

A group of four people and myself from Cogswell got the chance to visit Zynga from Women in Games International, a group formed for the purpose of providing women with support and opportunities in the game industry. While there, we got a tour of the studio, which included the exercise room, bar (yes, there’s a full bar) the candy room, and the Farmville rooms!

After the tour, we got to enjoy some h’ordeuvres and listen to a panel given by women leaders at Zynga. Some of them had been in the industry for quite some time, and a few originally hadn’t had any intention of going into games. Yet another one actually played WOW as a side hobby. (Yes!)

It was amazing to see Zynga up close. It was clear to see the passion that they had for their work. We also got to do a lot of great networking, and meet people working in the heart of the mobile game industry. It was an amazing opportunity!

The animation and games industries are two places where you rarely find women working, until recently. Even Cogswell has been a heavily male-dominated school until a few years ago. What’s exciting is the wide-spread growth of organizations that are specifically for women in these industries (although men may join). These groups promote networking, inclusion, exposure, encouragement and opportunities to hear industry leaders. By creating a more diverse workplace, animations and games will be even stronger therefore garner more consumer enjoyment.

Two organizations that I am involved with are Women in Animation and Women in Games International. Thanks to Women in Animation, I’ve had the opportunity to visit Pixar twice as well as network with some of the best known women in the business. Being a newer member to Women in Games (WIG), this week I will visiting Zynga’s campus for the re-opening of the San Francisco WIG chapter. As a primary developer of Facebook games, Zynga is one of the most famous game companies in the Bay Area.

I definitely recommend checking these two groups out, and any groups dedicated to animation and games in general. As well as being fun to join, they can be key to getting crucial contacts in the industry.

On Saturday, April 11th, something pretty exciting will be happening here at Cogswell.

In an effort to create stronger connections between alumni, students and the school, Cogswell will be hosting a mixer event honoring our past students and future graduates. So what can we expect to see at this event?

In addition to having the opportunity to connect with alumni working in the industry from all degree concentrations, students can attend a panel at which graduates will speak about their experiences since leaving the school. All attendees will also have the option to showcase their portfolios and demo reels during the event. (Since this is also this last semester we’ll be in the old building, we will have a pretty fun activity that might involving writing all over the walls—more details on that later!)

Students, be sure to polish those portfolios up pretty well—we will have alumni attending this event who might be interested in hiring!

Recently, I’ve been researching Cogswell graduates to add to a contact list for an alumni reunion. I was pleasantly surprised and amazed at some of the names that cropped up—not only were there an impressive number of graduates working in the industry, quite a few held job titles like Lead Animator, CEO, Art Director, and even more still owned their own companies. Previous to doing this research, I’d had no idea they existed; and I thought I’d share their job titles as a resource to other Cogswell students.

In the Los Angeles and Bay Area regions, we have a number of alumni working at Disney, DreamWorks, EA, Sony Animation, Cryptic, Activision and other large, well known studios. They are storyboard artists, technical artists, designers, animators, layout artists, riggers and hold tons of other positions. I was blown away to learn that, among others, one of our alumni is a Lead Animator at EA games. In addition, we also have alumni with positions such as: Art Director at Sony Animation Entertainment; Lead Lighter/Compositor at DreamWorks, Lead/Senior designer at Crystal Dynamics; Vice President of Production at Toonbox Entertainment; President/CEO at Logigear; Broadcast Designer at NBC; Supervising Engineer at Warner Brothers; and the list goes on. Alumni from all degree programs are talented leaders.

We are a very small college, and yet it seems we have a very large amount of alumni in comparison holding impressive positions within the industry. Most students aren’t even aware of the credits that our graduates hold. Personally, I feel like Cogswell College is a bit of a hidden gem in the Silicon Valley—not everyone knows that we’re here, but those who do find Cogswell know that they have stumbled across something unique.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the amazing opportunity to visit Pixar with the manager of post-production, Robert Tachoires. Besides just being a nice and all-around awesome person, Robert took the time out of his busy schedule to show me around Pixar for nearly two hours. I’ll be honest—it was slightly surreal. I casually passed by people like the director of Brave, Mark Andrews, Pete Docter, and other famous names.

He gave me the general tour of what you’d expect at Pixar—the cafeteria, Oscar awards case, cereal bar, post room, studio store—but he also got clearance to show me the animation and tech departments!

Pixar has two main buildings where the artists are located. There’s the Steve Jobs building, which has animators on one side and the tech/post production side on the other, and the Brooklyn building which houses the pre-production artists. Naturally, I didn’t get to see much of pre-production since that’s all top secret. Going through the animation department however blew my mind—there is literally a mini-village inside of Pixar!

Each animator is given the chance to decorate their own space however they want—and some have literally imported Tuff sheds to live in while they do their work. One was decorated to look exactly like a miniature everyday-house you’d see on a street, white picket fence included. Another looked just like a Tiki hut, and a particular ‘street’ in the animation department resembled Chinatown. One room seemed to overflow with Ninja Turtles toys and posters.

I got a close-up look at their Oscar trophy case—which actually included drawings by children! That earned a couple of bonus points in my book. Also, they had a huge Render Farm—processing machines lined every wall of a see-through room – which had a water-circulating system designed specifically for keeping everything cool.

The saddest part was definitely leaving Pixar. It was thrilling being around so many people who made the Pixar name legendary. It’s pretty obvious why everyone wants to work there! (Not just because of the Pixar store, though that was amazing. I loaded up on some major Pixar swag).

Cogswell CollegeDigital Media Management (DMM) program faculty and students attended the “Next Steps for Technology Forum” which was sponsored by Intel and Rainbow PUSH. Engaging in dialogue about increasing diversity in the employment and supplier pipelines over 300 people including VC’s, entrepreneurs, technology companies and community based organizations. Participants were treated to talks from Rev. Jesse Jackson and upper management from tech companies.

If I were to describe an experience as life-changing, this would be one those experiences. Talent from all over the world was concentrated into a single, weekend-long conference at the Marriott Hotel in Burbank, California. Thousands of artists and animation enthusiasts gathered to participate in workshops, visit artist booths, have their portfolio reviews by industry professionals and make connections. Animation legends like Glen Keane and Eric Goldberg were there. More than once, I walked by a short, older man in a Hawaiian shirt and realized I’d just passed by one of the greatest names in animation. While I never got the chance to talk with Eric Goldberg, it was thrilling just having seen him in real life.

Sierra Gaston with Dice Tsutsumi

I participated in seven workshops, many of them concentrating on character design. A particularly useful one by Ty Carter, a visual development artist at Blue Sky Studios, focused on how to get a dream job right after college. Ty Carter made it very clear that a lot of hard work was required—and that if any of the workshop attendees were as good as the artists currently exhibiting at CTN, we would definitely get into the industry.

I had around four portfolio reviews; two by Nickelodeon from their Artist Program and Interactive Content Development departments, one by a professional (and very exhausted) character designer, and the last by an extremely talented character and design artist who actually volunteered to look at my portfolio and gave me feedback. Portfolio review is so extremely important—while getting invaluable critiques on how to make your art work better, you are also making connections and getting a really good look at what the industry standard is. There’s a certain degree of fear in what others will say about your work, but I was mostly eager to see in which areas I was succeeding and which ones I needed to work harder at. The reviews were very positive, and I left with a clear vision of what I needed to work on before application dates rolled around. I also gained a possible lead working with Nickelodeon.

Sierra Gaston with Tom Moore

In addition to workshops, book signings, and meeting artists, I got to see a screening of Song of the Sea, the newest animated feature by Cartoon Saloon in Ireland. A story about selkies, humans that are part seal in nature and can transform when they put on their coats, Song of the Sea is breathtaking in its 2D traditional intricacy. It’s wonderful seeing a traditional animation studio from Ireland making waves in such a 3D animation-focused industry.

CTN is an absolute must for any serious student in any area of animation. The connections are invaluable, and it is a privilege to be in the same room as some of the artists that attended this year. It’s a dose of reality to be around industry professionals of that caliber—while in school you’re in a completely different environment, but once you’re actually talking and interacting with people you’ve only heard about your entire life, it makes it that much more real. A weekend in Burbank among people in love with what they do is the perfect tool for inspiration and personal growth.

The only event of its kind presents a unique opportunity that brings together the top professionals from both the traditional and digital worlds of animation. Hosted by the Creative Talent Network, this six year event has captured both the industry and local community’s attention as a resource for education, employment, inspiration, business opportunities and most of all FUN!

While the Expo has a very broad appeal, it is focused specifically on “THE TALENT” from the animation and surrounding communities. In an intimate setting at the Burbank Marriott Hotel and Convention Center thousands of attendees meet the faces behind the fantasy from yesterday, today and tomorrow over the course of 3 days. The event presenters include contributors from some of the highest grossing animated films of all time and are targeted to empower professionals, educate students and entertain the general public.

Of particular interest to attendees are the Live Demonstrations, Networking Receptions, Master Workshops, Panel Discussions, Business Symposiums, Recruiting and the Professional Exhibits offered throughout the Expo as well as the signature One-On-One Personal Consultations with creative professionals from top studios and educational institutions both local and international all happening during the first city wide proclamation of “Animation Week” just for this event.

With a demographic that includes both students and professionals it is our pleasure to work closely with each of our sponsors to ensure that every agreement is tailored to address your specific marketing objectives. Together we can make this event a memorable and successful one that will bring the community together as well as raise awareness for the animation medium each and every year.

“…AMAZING … ONE OF A KIND … BETTER THAN EVER … SO NEEDED IN OUR INDUSTRY…”

- See more at: http://www.ctnanimationexpo.com/axAboutUs.php#sthash.4zihYqnp.dpuf